Free summaries
Novels — page 12
2,574 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 12 of 54.
The Green Goddess
William Archer
This is a taut, atmospheric thriller about a trio of stranded travelers facing a cold, calculating despot in an isolated Himalayan kingdom. It is a story of moral high-stakes, simmering interpersonal resentment, and the brutal collision of cultures.
The Shadow of the Cathedral
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
A broken revolutionary seeks sanctuary within the vast, decaying walls of the Toledo Cathedral, only to find that the ancient institution he despises is as fragile as his own failing health.
'Possum
Mary Grant Bruce
A family exchanges the polished comfort of suburban life for the rugged, unpredictable reality of an Australian farm. Their journey toward self-reliance is a testament to the transformative power of shared labor and new horizons.
Psichopath
Randall Garrett
A secret government agent must neutralize a brilliant scientist who is subconsciously sabotaging his own experiments through psychic interference. This story explores the clash between rigid scientific dogma and the terrifying reality of uncontrollable mental power.
The Girl from the Marsh Croft
Selma Lagerlöf
A young woman’s act of quiet integrity unravels a web of secrets in this collection of stories, where the boundaries between rural harshness and moral redemption blur.
In the Morning of Time
Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
The dawn of humanity is a brutal, wonder-filled struggle against creatures that have long since vanished into the earth. This chronicle follows the first flickering of human invention and the quiet birth of love in a world of monsters.
Second Childhood
Clifford D. Simak
An ancient man, weary of an eternity of life, seeks a way to reset his mind to escape the suffocating weight of five thousand years of memory.
The Dueling Machine
Ben Bova
The Dueling Machine is a gripping, fast-paced science fiction thriller centered on the weaponization of a therapeutic technology. It explores the vulnerability of civilized societies when confronted with an adversary who refuses to play by the rules.
The Hillman
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A rugged man from the Cumbrian hills is drawn into a sophisticated and deceptive London social circle, where he becomes infatuated with a famous actress whose past is shrouded in secrets.
Industrial Revolution
Poul Anderson
A clever, high-stakes standoff in deep space, this tale explores the volatile intersection of corporate independence and government overreach. It captures the tension of a frontier civilization fighting for autonomy against a home world that views them as mere property.
Sisters
Ada Cambridge
This sweeping narrative of Australian social life charts the long, often painful evolution of three sisters navigating class expectations, romantic disillusionment, and the quiet endurance required by changing fortunes.
The yellow rose
Mór Jókai
A horseman rides the endless Hungarian plains, his heart weighed down by a yellow rose and the volatile woman who bestowed it upon his rival. This spare, atmospheric tale captures the fierce, unspoken codes of the puszta.
Told in the Hills: A Novel
Marah Ellis Ryan
The rugged silence of the Montana mountains guards secrets that test the mettle of those who dare to cross them. A story of honor, suspicion, and the quiet redemption found in the wilderness.
Red Money
Fergus Hume
HOOK A vast inheritance, a cold-blooded murder, and a trail of blood-stained money entangle a widow and her cousin in a web of blackmail and gypsy intrigue.
The 3rd Party
Lee B. Holum
HOOK A chemist is snatched from his work on a revolutionary new power source, becoming a pawn in a shadow war between global powers.
The Little Match Man
Luigi Barzini
A cynical foreign journalist in Japan befriends a sentient, match-sized tree spirit who guides his reporting and ultimately influences the outcome of a wartime military campaign.
Tom Gerrard
Louis Becke
A man of the Australian frontier finds his life newly anchored by the discovery of his young niece and a burgeoning love for a pioneer’s daughter.
A Soldier of the Legion
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
HOOK A young man enlists in the French Foreign Legion to escape a ruined life, only to find himself entangled in a dangerous desert rescue mission alongside the woman he is sworn to protect.
The Tigress
Anne Warner
This is a story of a woman whose charm is as dangerous as it is effortless, charting the volatile wreckage left in the wake of her romantic entanglements. It explores the blurred lines between genuine devotion and the predatory nature of a serial heartbreaker.
The Young Diana: An Experiment of the Future
Marie Corelli
The story of a woman who trades her aging, lonely life for an experimental rejuvenation, this narrative explores the cost of shedding one's history to reclaim the promise of eternal youth.
As It Was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story
Henry Harland
A musician discovers the terrifying truth behind his own haunted past and the unexplained death of the woman he loved. This psychological narrative explores the crushing weight of ancestral curses and fractured identity.
Grim: The Story of a Pike
Svend Fleuron
A pike’s existence is defined by a singular, cold-blooded imperative: to consume everything that moves before becoming prey herself. This narrative follows one such predator from her hatching in a ditch to her eventual, legendary end.
The Joy of Captain Ribot
Armando Palacio Valdés
A sea captain’s accidental encounter with a refined Spanish family leads him into a complex web of unrequited love and moral crisis. This Mediterranean tale balances the light of a coastal paradise against the shadows of human desire and ruin.
The Penal Cluster
Randall Garrett
In a future where telepathic "Controllers" are feared as criminals, a deep-cover agent discovers that the lawmen hunting his kind share the very power they claim to eradicate.
The Trouble with Telstar
John Berryman
The silent, unforgiving vacuum of space demands a kind of precision that earthly boardrooms rarely comprehend. When a satellite goes mute, the only way to fix it is to leave the ground behind and enter the void.
After the Pardon
Matilde Serao
A piercing study of the wreckage left by an affair, this narrative follows two former lovers who discover that, though their passion has vanished, the emotional ghosts of their betrayal remain inescapable.
It Could Be Anything
Keith Laumer
HOOK A young man leaves his small-town home to discover the world, only to find that reality is a fragile, hollow stage managed by inscrutable, fluid entities.
The Honorable Percival
Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
An insufferably arrogant British aristocrat finds his meticulously ordered world dismantled by an irrepressible American girl during a long, transformative voyage across the Pacific.
A Japanese Nightingale
Onoto Watanna
A young Japanese woman marries a wealthy American to secretly finance her brother's Western education, leading to heartbreak, hidden identity, and a desperate search across Japan.
A Life For a Love: A Novel
L. T. Meade
A high-society courtship turns into a nightmarish trap when a young woman learns that her marriage is the key to a massive financial fraud.
Diana
Emil Ludwig
A young, sun-bronzed woman travels Europe to inspire men, outwit aristocrats, and live beyond conventional boundaries before yielding to the responsibilities of power and quiet devotion.
My Lady of the Chimney Corner
Alexander Irvine
In the dirt-floor cabins of nineteenth-century Ulster, a mother's fierce devotion and earthly wisdom shield her family against the relentless tide of Irish poverty.
The Green God's Pavilion: A novel of the Philippines
Mabel Wood Martin
A young American woman arrives in turn-of-the-century Manila seeking independence, only to find herself drawn into the turbulent personal and political forces of an island nation under United States occupation.
Woman Triumphant (La Maja Desnuda)
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
A great artist surrenders his peace to an ideal he can neither paint nor replace.
Froth: A Novel
Armando Palacio Valdés
Beneath the polished veneer of Madrid’s high society lies a hollow world of posturing, vanity, and moral rot.
Hilda: A Story of Calcutta
Sara Jeannette Duncan
In the vibrant, shifting atmosphere of late nineteenth-century Calcutta, an ambitious actress, a devoted street-preacher, and a high-society maiden navigate a web of spiritual longing, social expectation, and conflicting romantic desires.
Lord of a Thousand Suns
Poul Anderson
A million-year-old warlord's ghost reawakens inside a young officer's mind, turning one human skull into a battlefield for the fate of empires.
The Greater Power
Harold Bindloss
A fallen gentleman finds his true purpose in the Canadian wilderness, where clearing a river canyon reveals the bond between honest toil and enduring love.
The Path of a Star
Sara Jeannette Duncan
A dramatic study of ambition, spiritual fervor, and mismatched devotions set against the humid social landscape of late nineteenth-century Calcutta.
The Path of Life
Stijn Streuvels
A young boy sits in a sunlit loft, watching a ribbon of white sand cut through the fields toward an unknown horizon.
The Shadow Witch
Gertrude Crownfield
A gentle hearthside realm of magic unfolds where love turns shadow into light.
Grey Town
Gerald R. (Gerald Robert) Baldwin
A turbulent coastal river and an idealistic Irish-Australian community form the backdrop for a story of ambition, lost faith, and redemption.
One Day's Courtship, and The Heralds of Fame
Robert Barr
Two swift romancing tales of artists, writers, and sudden transatlantic sparks unfold along Canadian rivers and across the open sea.
Planet explorer
Murray Leinster
A lone engineer armed only with physics, field equipment, and stubborn self-respect stands between fragile human colonies and immediate, bizarre extinction.
Scanners live in vain
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
A man surrenders his senses to survive the agonizing void of deep space, only to discover that the breakthrough rendering his sacrifice obsolete will cost him his purpose, his brotherhood, and very likely his life.
Subspace Survivors
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
The starship Procyon drops out of space into a fatal hazard, leaving nine survivors trapped aboard a drifting hulk who must master an unknown physical field to survive.
The Dangerous Age: Letters and Fragments from a Woman's Diary
Karin Michaëlis
A forty-three-year-old woman abandons her comfortable marriage to seek solitude on a remote island, only to confront the bitter psychological and physical realities of middle age.
The Stars, My Brothers
Edmond Hamilton
Sleeping for a century in space leaves a man without a home, a time, or the comfort of easy human loyalties.